title: Controlling intentions: the surprising ease of stopping after going relative to stopping after never having gone.
abstract: Decades of cognitive-control research have highlighted the difficulty of controlling a prepotent response. We examined whether having prepotent prospective-memory intentions similarly heightens the difficulty associated with stopping an intention once a prospective-memory task is finished. In three experiments, participants encoded a prospective-memory intention (e.g., press Q in response to the targets corn and dancer) and subsequently encountered either four targets or zero targets. Instructions then indicated that the prospective-memory task was finished. In a follow-up task, the targets appeared, and commission errors were recorded. Surprisingly, it was easier for participants to stop the intention when it had been fulfilled (four-target condition) than when it had gone unfulfilled (zero-target condition; Experiments 1 and 2). This was true even after intention cancellation (Experiment 2). Although repeatedly performing an intention strengthens target-action links, it appears to enable deactivation of the intention, a process that is largely target specific (Experiment 3). We relate these findings to the Zeigarnik effect, target-action deactivation, and reconsolidation theories.
authors.affiliation: 1Department of Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis.
authors.forename: Julie M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Bugg
authors.forename: Michael K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Scullin
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D033182:Intention; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: cognitive processes; prospective memory; response inhibition